Wednesday 24 March 2010
Obama Reached Across the Aisle ☀
sds:
“Obama’s legislation comes from an alternative idea, begun under the Eisenhower administration and developed under Nixon, of a market for health care based on private insurers and employers. Eisenhower locked in the tax break for employee health benefits; Nixon pushed prepaid, competing health plans, and urged a requirement that employers cover their employees. Obama applies Nixon’s idea and takes it a step further by requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, and giving subsidies to those who need it. So don’t believe anyone who says Obama’s health care legislation marks a swing of the pendulum back toward the Great Society and the New Deal. Obama’s health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican rather than a New Deal foundation. The New Deal foundation would have offered Medicare to all Americans or, at the very least, featured a public insurance option.”—Robert Reich (via azspot, marco)
…To call this bill conservative is either to say that words have no meaning, or that we haven’t agreed on defining the terms.…
This bill is fairly close to what conservative Mitt Romney spearheaded in Massachusetts, is it not?
Much to the chagrin of progressives, Obama repeatedly reached across the aisle to make this a bipartisan effort. Subsequently, the Republicans, in turn, rejected almost exactly what they previously put forth as health care reform.
And quit citing polls about the public being opposed to the bill without acknowledging that at least 10-15% or more of that cited opposition opposes it because it doesn’t go far enough, that it’s “not liberal enough”.
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